A population of small reef fish hiding amongst the spines of sea urchins in the Banggai Archipelago, doing their best to avoid capture by the hands of ornamental fish collectors, may now depend on their captors to ensure existence in the wild. The Banggai cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni) are in trouble as result of their unique…

With jack frost nipping at your nose and holiday spiced drinks at your local coffee shop, ‘tis the season to be on the lookout for reindeer. Even if you don’t leave carrots by the chimney for Rudolf on Christmas Eve, reindeer are handsome, hardy animals that inspire thoughts of sparkling white snowscapes, the north woods,…

Fossa are bizarre-looking apex predators endemic to Madagascar.

We’ve seen psychedelic reptiles on this blog before.  Surely, you may be thinking, the pool of psychedelic species is relatively limited. Not so fast!  Poisons are incredibly important for amphibian defense, so there tend to be lots of poisonous amphibians around.  And, for whatever reason, humans like to ingest these intended toxins to try and…

Orchid bee cologne smells a bit like vanilla, cinnamon, and a dollop of rotting meat…

No one likes being laughed at. And no one likes sibling sabotage. The laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) does both with little regard for what we find objectionable. Laughing kookaburras are the largest kingfisher species in the world and can be described as stout, stocky, and overall pretty thicc [1]. These creepy kooks, like many frightening…

“Take no prisoners!” said no slave-making ant ever.

In the animal kingdom, zombies really do exist! The cause is most often some nasty (but fascinating) parasites, and you’d best believe that these parasites are truly terrifying to their respective hosts.

The zebra finch is arguably in the running to be the world’s next top model….organism, that is